


The Sporting Thing

by Isagel



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Undergraduates Make Them Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:16:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt left by gumbie_cat: ""Heading deeper into the land of cliches: how about if instead of aliens <i>undergraduates</i> somehow make them do it?" (I admit, I love this prompt so much, I want Undergraduates Make Them Do It to become a Lewis fandom trope. *g*)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sporting Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gumbie_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbie_cat/gifts).



Emma Haynesworth shakes her head.

“Can't be in the room if you don't want to play the game, Detective Inspector,” she says. “The rules are very clear.” She tilts her head, smiles just a fraction, challenging. Her eyes flicker from Lewis to James, and back again. “I would have thought that as officers of the law, you'd understand about rules.”

“And I would think our rules trump yours, Miss Haynesworth,” Lewis says. “Last time I checked, I could still have you locked up for refusing to cooperate with a police inquiry.”

His voice sounds gruff, but there's no force behind it.

The thing is, James thinks, that Emma is the kind of girl that Lewis can't help but be utterly charmed by – all life and cheek and flights of fancy, like Nell Buckley and her crocodiles. The half-smile he gives her is the one he gives Laura Hobson when she's on a roll down at the pub, the same one he bestows on James when he is making inappropriate puns about Kant in the homes of philosophy professors who are bound to call Jean Innocent the morning after and vent their outrage at the lack of standards in the modern police force: entertained and not giving the slightest that he ought not to be. James has been entirely unable not to angle for that smile since the first time he saw it. In the long-term, that's probably not going to work any wonders for his career, but then again, he's hardly in this to make Chief Super Intendent.

“Oh, don't be a spoilsport, Inspector,” Emma says. “One round, and when we're done here, I'll tell you everything I know about the dear departed Mr. Higgins. You don't want to go through all that fuss of dragging me down to the station and shining a bright light in my face, do you?”

Lewis rolls his eyes, but James can already tell from the set of his shoulders that he's going to give in.

“Come on, sir,” he says. “Be a good sport.”

Lewis throws him a sharp glare, and James grins at him, leaning back with exaggerated looseness against the kitchen cabinets, making a show of settling in as the expectant spectator. The corner of Lewis's mouth twists, a look that says _I will have your hide for this later, Sergeant, don't you go thinking otherwise_. It makes James feel reckless and secure, both in equal measure, sends a fluttering thrill up his spine.

“How does this work, then?” Lewis asks, turning back to Emma. A chorus of cheers and claps erupts from the group of undergraduates flocked around the kitchen table.

Emma smiles, victorious, and picks up two mismatched glass bowls, filled with folded scraps of paper.

“Whitman or Shakespeare?” she asks, raising them each in turn, Lady Justice with her scales.

Lewis makes a face that says he couldn't care less, but then, predictably, says:

“Shakespeare.”

Emma holds the bowl in her left hand out to him.

“Pick an immortal line of verse, Inspector,” she says, with the flourish of a magician, “any immortal line of verse.”

Lewis sticks his hand in the bowl, rummages around a bit, like a man trying to find the winning lottery ticket at the village fête, and the paper rustles crisply over the clink of someone pouring another glass of wine, the Coldplay track playing low on the iPod speakers on the window sill. He pulls a note out, holds it up between his fore- and middle fingers.

“It's the Bard, Inspector,” Emma's girlfriend Charlotte says from where she's perched on the kitchen counter. “You have to recite it.”

“There's a reason I never joined the drama society at school, mind,” Lewis says, but he unfolds the piece of paper and looks at it.

He's very still as he reads it through quietly to himself, his face giving nothing away.

For a moment James remembers that this is the kind of undergraduate game that tends to end with calls to the station about students punting down the Cherwell while singing an aria from _Cosi fan tutte_ and wearing nothing but the deer antlers that belong on the wall of the study of the Master of Chaucer College. Perhaps this whole thing was a somewhat less than brilliant idea. But then he has no doubt that Lewis is perfectly able to extricate himself with grace and creativity from any too embarrassing tasks. These kids are the kind of undergraduates who like him almost immediately, in spite of the circumstances in which they meet him, who see past the accent and the class markers and the lack of a First in a dead language to the qualities that matter, as James well knows that parts of the Oxford establishment have never done. They're playing for fun, not humiliation, and will likely be delighted with the merest gesture of participation from Lewis. He shouldn't worry.

“Well?” Emma prompts.

Lewis shifts his weight from foot to foot, and reads.

 _“Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,--  
Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red--  
The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine.”_

It's not a noteworthy reading, nor one that tries to be. It's simple, and straightforward, and warm, and something prickles under the surface of James's skin, a scratching heat he has to close his eyes for a second to push back.

“Nice one,” a blond boy at the far end of the table says. “Easy one, too. Last time we played I got one from The Merchant of Venice that required a sail boat.”

“Not one I can do, though, I'm afraid,” Lewis says. “Police regulations frown a bit on officers on duty kissing potential murder suspects. Rules, you know. I'm sure you understand.”

James can't help a huff of laughter escaping at that, and Emma makes a small performance of clutching her chest and staggering back.

“Oh, ouch, Inspector. Consider me hoisted on the infamous petard. You don't really suspect any of us, though, I don't believe you're that much of a plod. I think you already have a pretty good idea who did it, and just want our testimony to confirm your theories. But I don't know if we can count citing police regs as playing a round. Afraid you might have to pull another quote if you really don't want to do this one.”

She picks up the bowl again, shakes it with a taunting playfulness so that the notes rustle around inside it.

Lewis's face scrunches, in irritation or indecision, James can't really tell from where he's standing.

“Sir,” he says, and it's meant to come out as a reminder of why they're here, a reminder that Lewis doesn't have to play along with any of this if he doesn't want to. But that's not what it sounds like at all.

“Sergeant,” Lewis says, and turns to him. There is a note of warning in his voice, and in his eyes...

“Oh, that's right,” Emma says, beaming. “Unless there's something you haven't told us about the lovely Sergeant Hathaway, not everyone here is a murder suspect. Perfect solution, isn't it?”

In Lewis's eyes, there is a wistfulness, something almost pained, a hope escaping despite being pushed down. James's heart is suddenly beating so fast he can feel it, wild against his ribs. And there it is again, that sense of recklessness, that certainty that he is safe to be reckless, that it will be all right.

“Go on, then, sir,” he says, the edges of his lips curving in a smile that is a challenge, that is as insufferable as he knows how to be. “You know it's the sporting thing to do.”

Someone at the table whistles, someone calls out “That's the spirit, Sergeant!” But James's eyes are only on Lewis now, Lewis's eyes are only on him.

The moment stretches, sharpens, piercing as the honed point of Lewis's mind trying to read him, trying to figure him out. He stays still beneath it, makes himself not falter, not dodge from this.

Then Lewis takes a step towards him, and another, and they're standing face to face, James still slouched against the cabinets, his hands still in his pockets, and Lewis right there in front of him. Lewis lifts his hand, wraps it round the back of James's neck, a broad span of warmth.

“Yeah?” he asks, softly, almost a whisper, just between them.

“Yes,” James says. The tip of his tongue flicks out to wet his lips. Lewis's gaze sweeps down to his mouth, sweeps up again. His pupils are wide in the brown of his eyes. “Yes.”

Lewis's hand presses down on the back of his neck, a weight bending him down, a tug pulling him in, and Lewis tilts his own face up, turns it to him, and their lips meet.

It's slow, gentle, the merest brush of touch across his mouth. Lewis's lips aren't soft, precisely – they're worn, like the rest of him, roughened and creased by years and life – but the slide of them is a caress, careful and tender. Something catches in the back of James's throat, a sound like a gasp, a whimper. His lips part, wanting, and Lewis's hand tightens on the nape of his neck, and Lewis's tongue is there, tracing the inner arc of his lip, pressing deeper. James's fingers clench in his trouser pockets, and Lewis's tongue flickers against his, tasting him.

Then it's over, Lewis pulling away. From the students around them, there is clapping, cheering, more whistling. James's eyes are closed, his head still bent under Lewis's hand. He doesn't quite want to straighten up.

Lewis leans in, though, leans close to speak in James's ear.

“The sporting thing here, James,” he says, and he sounds breathless, sounds steeled against the emotion in his own voice, “would be to not pretend that this was for some game. All right?”

His thumb strokes across the soft skin behind James's ear, and then he lets go completely, steps back for real.

James opens his eyes. Lewis is still looking at him. Everyone else, as well, probably, but he can't make himself care about that. His lips quirk in a smile.

“Mine own as well as thine,” he says.

Lewis doesn't smile back at him, but he nods, confirming, and his eyes are shining.

“Now, then,” he says, turning away, “if no one has any more objections, can we get to the part of the evening's activities where we talk about Higgins? Thank you.”


End file.
